


so fill up your glasses for those who were kind

by palavapeite



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: F/M, Friends With Benefits, cards and cunnilingus, references to past childermass/hannah/lucy/dido, stovetop action (vague)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:46:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28959684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palavapeite/pseuds/palavapeite
Summary: Hurtfew Abbey, 13 February, 1817. Childermass is found brooding in the kitchen late at night.
Relationships: John Childermass/Hannah
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8
Collections: JSAMN Valentine's Rarepair Fest!





	so fill up your glasses for those who were kind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PudentillaMcMoany](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PudentillaMcMoany/gifts).



> For PudentillaMcMoany, who asked for Childermass/Hannah and friends with benefits. Is there romantic tension? Who's to say...

“Well, haven’t I seen this picture before…” 

She still wore that same apron with sunflowers and poppies embroidered along the hem, and in the shadows of the kitchen door late at night she rather looked like she had not aged a day since she had first found him sleepless at the long oak table, nigh on twenty years ago. 

“I’m still not sneaking into the pantry,” he replied, leaning back until he was stilled by the precarious creak of the chair underneath him. As he watched her step out of the doorway and closer to the firelight, arms crossed over her chest, the lines in her face came out, adding at least some of the years that they had both seen since that night. 

“You’re always sneaking into the pantry.” Pulling the patched shawl that had once belonged to the cook, God rest her soul, tighter around her shoulders, she walked over to the large stone sink, returning with a tin cup that she set down opposite Childermass, whose hand was wrapped around a cup of his own. “One day, I swear, I will catch you at it, too.” 

“Promises, promises…” 

She chuckled, and made for one of the cupboards across the room, a familiar sway to her hips. 

“I’ve been wondering where you’d gone off to.” At the back of her neck, dark curls had got loose from underneath her cap and were falling down her back, bringing up images of tumbling dark hair, hot with the sun and soft to the touch, tangling with the ties of her apron at the small of her back. 

As though she could feel his eyes on her, she cast a look back over her shoulder and smirked. “Hiding from a gentleman, were you? Nasty piece of work, I hear.”

“Avoiding. Not hiding,” Childermass corrected, and she chuckled, a tall, dark bottle in her hand when she sat down facing him. 

“Still.” The cork came out with a soft pop, and she poured herself a generous amount, then let the mouth of the bottle hover over Childermass’ cup. “You look like you could use a drink.” 

The sharp scent of cheap brandy wafted from the opening. Not the stuff a gentleman would order, but the stuff the farmhand and the blacksmith’s apprentice drew from last year’s wine behind the abandoned gamekeeper’s shed. 

“I never drink in the performance of my duties.” 

“And are you performing them now?” she asked, huffing a laugh, and he took his cup and looked ponderously down into the dregs of his tea, at the Cards of Marseilles that lay spread across the table between them. 

“These days, it feels as though I always am.” 

He finished his tea with a swift gulp, and a heavy beat of silence followed.

“Aw,” Hannah pulled a face. “Poor, _poor_ John.” 

Childermass laughed.

“Sometimes,” he pushed his cup at her so she could pour while he took out his pipe to stuff it, “I wonder why I like you.” 

Snorting as she set down the bottle, Hannah clinked her cup against his, and knocked back her drink with a hiss and a shudder. His own mouthful of brandy burning down his throat, Childermass peered at her, his eyes narrowed against the vile taste. 

It had been wine, that first night. Left over from some social occasion Mr Norrell’s neighbours had visited upon him, and it had been as sour as Mr Norrell’s face when he had complained to Childermass about it. 

It had been summer, an unusually hot one, Childermass remembered, and the air in the kitchen had been stuffy and uncomfortable even at night. He remembered with strange clarity the soft sheen of sweat that had sat on Hannah’s collarbone when she had approached him, relieved that he was not a burglar, but not conveying the impression that she would have shrunk from a brawl, either. 

They had both been new to Mr Norrell’s service, back in another century. 

Now it felt as if they had always belonged to Hurtfew Abbey. 

Childermass certainly felt as though he did. 

Hannah, though her hair and eyes were still dark and vibrant and untamed, was closer to forty than thirty now. Childermass doubted she would shirk from a brawl any more now than at twenty-four. 

“I heard you got shot.” As she said this, she bent across the table and snatched his pipe from his fingers, raising an inquisitive eyebrow at him as she placed it between her lips. 

“Years ago,” he replied with a smirk, reaching for the bottle and pouring them each another. 

“Nothing incapacitated, I hope?” Offering his pipe back to him, she let her gaze trail up and down his body as far as she could see. 

“Now,” Childermass placed the pipe in the corner of his grin, “why would you ask such a thing?” 

“Well, if you’re gonna ask a girl to climb all the way to your room in the attic, I want to know it’ll be worth my while.” 

It occurred to him then, watching her lick a drop of brandy off her finger after pressing the cork back into the bottle, that she had to be near forty-five. It was too easy to forget that she was almost of an age with him; the years had been far kinder to her than to him. 

Elbows on the table as he leaned forward, Childermess held up his cup. Perhaps it was the spark in her eye, or the brandy in his belly, but it was beginning to feel a little like summer. 

“Oh ho. Well, perhaps I won’t ask you then. If you’re _concerned_.” 

“Or perhaps,” Hannah leaned forward, leering ever so slightly, as she tapped her cup against his, “you want me to bring Lucy and Dido, too…?” 

Coughing when the second cup of brandy was no less terrible than the first, Childermass pursed his lips before taking a long drag on his pipe. 

“I am no longer twenty-five, Hannah.” 

“Ah, but I bet you could still blush just as daintily,” she grinned, ever the tease. Her eyes darted just a little to the left. “I bet I could still get up on that stovetop, though.” 

It was strange to hear his own voice laughing in response. It sounded so much like his younger self, who had returned from his first errand for his new master after two days on the road, and had helped himself to a late supper in the kitchen, only to be sharing mediocre wine with the maid who had caught him. He had only ever seen her at breakfast before, when she put his porridge in front of him with a wink and, instead of laughing at his lewd jokes, usually had a smart, or – sometimes, when the cook wasn’t listening – even filthier response at the ready. But she had laughed, too. 

They had laughed a lot. 

Her kisses still tasted of rosemary, always rosemary, the aftertaste of the brandy adding an edge to it as she pulled herself onto the stove, skirts and petticoats shifting up to reveal her shapely legs and slender ankles. 

Childermass let a hand trace a line up the side of her calf, across her knee, and up, up along the inside of her thigh, and she sighed a sound of delight into the kiss. 

When she raised her palms from the stovetop to cup his face, they were warm against his cheeks. 

When he moved his hand higher, her skin was hot against his palm, and he felt the breath of a chuckle and the nip of teeth on his tongue. 

“Shhh,” she giggled when, arching into the press of his fingers and drawing up a leg to wrap around his waist, her elbow sent a nearby pan cluttering, the clang of it loud in the silence of the house. 

“Eager,” he muttered, gently biting the side of her neck before he moved down, past the sunflowers and poppies scattered across her lap, to where his fingers were tangled in the underbrush. 

“Wait,” she panted as he leaned in, one of her legs hovering just above his shoulder, “which one did you get shot in...?” 

Grabbing her thigh and placing it down on his shoulder with a huff, he pressed his mouth firmly to her lips, cutting off whatever clever thing she was going to say next. All he heard was a low, muffled sigh, and he pictured her with her hand clasped over her mouth to stay quiet, and enjoyed nothing more than the thought of making it harder for her. 

He shifted his knees on the stone floor beneath, and burrowed his tongue into the softness above, his own arousal suspended halfway between the two, steadily alert to the rhythmic tip of her heel against his lower back. 

" _John..._ "

He knew she was getting close when he felt her fingers dig into his hair, and he backed off just enough to let his own fingers resume their work. Now that her hand was no longer covering her mouth, he could hear her ragged breath, in rhythm with the soft, restrained tilting of her hips, the hard press of her thigh against his ear and neck. 

She fell apart as she always did, in a long, shivering sigh that rose and fell like the sea, and then she laughed, breathless and exhilarated, her fingers caressing the crown of his head as he came up for air and pressed his face into the flowers in her lap. He was breathing deeply, inhaling the familiar scent of kitchen and hearth that lived in the linen of her apron, and grinned lazily as she wiped his face with it before bending down to kiss him. 

“She still looks like me,” she said when she had smoothed out her skirts a minute later, smirking and picking up _L’Etoile_ from the table, her movements languid and softer around the edges than before, her cap all askew, one of her braids tumbling down her back. 

Putting his pipe back in his mouth and sweeping up his deck, Childermass plucked the card from her fingers to shove it in his pocket with the rest of them. 

“Get thee off to bed,” he said fondly, and felt rather pleased – and decidedly flattered – when she, somewhat weak in the knees still, and idly tugging at the lacing of her gown, led up the stairs all the way to the top of the house.

**Author's Note:**

>  _So fill up your glasses for those who were kind  
>  And drink to the girls we are leaving behind  
> We're homeward bound I hear them say  
> We're homeward bound with eleven months pay  
> Our anchor we'll weigh, our sails we will set  
> The friends we are leaving we'll never forget_  
> -Goodbye, Fare Thee Well (sea shanty)


End file.
